fusion cuisine

Having watched coverage of the Middle East protests continuously, my mother was curious about the mention of an Egyptian national dish: spaghetti-rice as it was called from time to time. I thought it was quite interesting to pick up some cultural tidbits on the side, especial considering the open pledge drive for pizzas for the workers’ sit-in in Wisconsin in the States. Benefactors from Egypt donated $1000 worth of it to feed the movement. After a little research, we found the simple dish was kushari and a real staple of day-to-day life. I experimented and improvised a bit. The presentation is aesthetically not too pleasing but it was easy to make and boasts a lot of potential.
The ingredients that I chose were based on cooking time (the particular kind of pasta and rice could be set to boil and be done in the same time) but I am sure a lot of other variations, depending also on what is at hand, would be equally as good.

1 cup (about 100 grams) of Basmati Rice
1 ⅓ cup Penne Pasta
1 cup diced tomatoes (I tried Rotel)
1 ⅓ cup lentil soup (drained)
Hot Madras Curry Power
Ground Cumin
Garlic (clove)
I started the rice first, which required about twelve minutes on low boil, but started the pasta, with a bit of salt and olive oil at the same time. Then, removing the extra liquid from the tomatoes and lentils—dried lentils surely would have been better but take an hour to prepare and the bits of onion and peppers in the soup gave the dish some added texture, and as I vegetarian, I was sure to get lentils without Bauchspeck (pork belly) which is a challenge to find but I am sure kushari is great with lamb or chicken (schawarma it’s called, like Döner meat) as well—I added the spices, generously, and chopped garlic with the mix in a sauce pan, letting that simmer throughout. Everything was pretty much ready at once. Gently, I mixed together the rice and the pasta and then smothered it with the tomato and lentil sauce. It turned out to be really delicious, and I think it might come out better with the crunch of some caramelized onions or those crunchy, French-fried onions that have their only foothold in green-bean casserole, and also topped with garbanzo beans (chickpeas). One is meant I think, however, to go with whichever of the stock items one has in his pantry. This was a good meal for two, and though so much of my cooking is a one-off affair, I think I might try making this again.

vexillology

Since following closely the uprising in the Middle East, I have come to fondly identify our big mood lamp in the living room--"horned," originally, but now decidedly crescent, especially when viewed from outside on the balcony--as a sign of solidarity with the protesters, a sort of Bat-Signal, beacon, that this will ultimately turn out for the best for everyone. 

There seems to be genuine progress, condemnation and empathy in a united front however much that may be wanting to stave off interference and the potential to meddle and vouchsafing the people's security, safety and precariously delicate revolution.  It is more than a talent of statecraft to strike the right accord between talk and action, especially when the revolt itself was in part made possible by the byways and transparency of communication that make it more and more difficult to make one's self-interest and motives diffuse and deniable. 

Some governments have not yet invented (or forgot) the vocabulary to express honest and undisguised intentions, and such intrusion might be checked within a larger framework.  It is difficult to say what the international community could or should do, beyond being receptive to developments, not unfairly burdening the people's business of change with future projections and fears--the cost of oil and the flood of refugees--and applying the lessons that these cautionary leaders have been teaching all along. Incidentally, notice how one of the banners of the Franconia region of Germany, of which there are many standards of state, has a strong, inverted likeness with the flag of Bahrain.

fáil whale or pot-of-gold

Ireland's incumbent government was brutally routed as retribution for gross dereliction when it came to the custody of the country's wealth. Mismanagement and buying into flimsy schemes excited the ousting of the outgoing Fianna Fáil coalition, and though, no doubt, the people should be held to account whose conduct has lead Ireland's betrothal to years of indebtedness, the elections seem one on hand symbolic and moot. Saddled with this financial crisis, the incoming government has very little latitude in determining any significant changes to welfare or austerity, since all future funding has already been allocated--spent--to pay off IMF loans with money tight and choices narrowed. Many other places facing similar situations fear population and talent drains as people move with the fleeing job opportunities and spiraling revenues. Huge swaths of land stood nearly deserted already on our visits, with little going expect for the holidaymakers, but what may not have been visible or appreciable to us was I am sure a lot of individuals getting creative and inventive. Governments may never be luminaries at stretching the household budget, and some ministers, fearing saturation and stagnation, can only hope to repackage, refinance, or hope that extra-terrestrials will infuse the market with fresh buying-power.

One nation in the same predicament as Ireland, having already dumped its lax leadership and dealing summarily with withering investment and hardships to come, is Iceland.

The bit of genius they are testing, albeit ambitious and grandiose, is a proposal to channel geothermal energy from volcanic fonts in Iceland via cable to Scotland or Ireland and onto Europe. Considering how Iceland's exposure only shifted from news of the country's financial melt-down to how Eyjafjallajökull (Kajagoogoo) grounded air travel, that is a good stroke that people may soon be associating the country with plentiful, clean and cheap energy. There's a bit of wildness in laying a two thousand kilometer power line under the Atlantic, but the project's scale and goal is little different from the Suez or Panama Canals.

e*moticons

Thought Catalog (via the always stunning Mind Hacks) has a short reflection on the Internet's rather unexamined capacity to alter existential states. Though there are tumbling stacks of articles on how social networking has besmirched manners, etiquette and attention spans, there seems to be less said about the emotions--anxieties, rather--that the Internet has authored. That's a strange manifestation of artificial intelligence or a new weighted-factor for the Turning test. One's venues, perches for expressing and maintaining one's image have increased considerably with the new electronic real estate, and there is a strange, unrelenting pressure to update and to be the first on the scene. One should perhaps trust in all the redundancies built into the system for a bit of solace. If exposure is missed one place, the same item will mostly be re-run, recycled or re-posted elsewhere a little behind the curve. Nothing, in fact, ever goes away, notwithstanding the gnawing obligation to treat something as actionably otherwise. The internet is not like television, telethons, or radio in this respect. Neither are emails--discounting their speedier derivatives--the same as a phone call: they are designed, whether intended or not, to be answered at one's pace and not instantaneously refreshed.